Word of the Week: National Treasure

The Word of the Week comes from the Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon, a glossary of terms created by Chinese netizens and encountered in online political discussions. These are the words of China’s online “resistance discourse,” used to mock and subvert the official language around censorship and political correctness.

guóbǎo 国宝

Homophonous nickname for the Domestic Security Department (国保 Guó Bǎo), a branch of the police force within the Ministry of Public Security that handles political dissidents, human rights activists, petitioners, religious groups, and “subversive” activities.

DSD officials are more feared and reviled than the regular police, since they are not subject to the same oversight. They have been known to beat and illegally detain dissidents. Activist Hu Jia and artist Ai Weiwei have both been detained by the DSD before, while Liu Xia, wife of recently deceased Nobel-prize winning democracy activist Liu Xiaobo, remains under their watchful eye as she endures de facto house arrest.